ROSACE®. 259 
This is sometimes done on Twelfth Night as well as on Christmas-eve. The ceremony 
differs somewhat in different districts, occasionally having the addition of numerous 
little fires being lighted on the orchard-ground during the performance. The Wassail- 
bow! of our ancestors, which formed a part of all their festivals, was coinposed of ale, 
sugar, nutmeg, and roasted apples, which every person partook of, each one taking an 
apple out of the bowl and drinking the liquor. Sometimes the roasted apples were 
bruised and mixed with milk or white wine instead of ale. The custom of putting 
roasted apples into ale is recognized by Shakespeare, where Puck is describing his 
feats :— 
“Sometimes I lurk in a gossip’s bowl, 
In very likeness of a roasted crab ; 
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob, 
And on her wither’d dewlap pour the ale.” 
The custom of bobbing for apples on All-Hallow E’en and on All Saints’ Day was once 
common in England, and is now practised in some parts of Ireland, and exists in modi- 
fied forms in Scotland and in various counties in England. Poets have sung the praises 
of the Apple-tree, and we cannot help quoting a few lines from Philips and from 
Thomson, the lover of nature in her various garbs :— 
“The pippin burnish’d o’er with gold ; the moyle 
Of sweetest honied taste ; the fair pearmain, 
Temper’d, like comeliest nymph, with white and red.” 
Of Apple-gathering Thomson says :— 
“The fragrant stores, the wide projected heaps 
Of Apples, which the lusty-handed year 
Innumerous o’er the blushing orchard shakes, 
A various spirit, fresh, delicious, keen, 
Dwells in their gelid pores ; and active points 
The piercing cider for the thirsty tongue.” 
Philips, in 1706, published a poemin praise of the “ Herefordian plant,” as he 
calls it, and speaks of 
“ John Apple, whose withered rind intrencht 
With many a furrow, aptly represents decrepid age.” 
A description which accounts for Falstaff’s anger at the sight of the fruit: “ Thou 
know’st Sir John cannot endure an Apple John. The Prince once set a dish of Apple 
Johns before him, and told him there were five more Sir Johns, and putting off his hat 
said, I will now take my leave of these six dry, round, old withered knights. It angered 
him to the heart.” 
The acid produced by the Apple is the same as that of the Pear, and is of the 
same chemical value. Lately, the quantity of cider made in some districts has dimi- 
nished, owing to the fact of whole orchards of Apples being purchased for manufacturing 
and dyeing purposes. 
The Wild Apple-tree is the badge of the Highland clan Lamont. 
